1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of manufacturing a nozzle member and a work apparatus, and is suitable for projecting a mask pattern formed on a mask onto a predetermined surface by uniformly and efficiently illuminating the mask surface with linear stripe-shaped illumination light, e.g., for the manufacturing method and work apparatus upon manufacturing a nozzle member to be used in an ink-jet printer.
2. Related Background Art
In recent years, precision parts have been popularly manufactured by a mask projection method. In the mask projection method, a laser is used as a light source, and a pattern on a mask illuminated by the laser beam is projected onto the surface to be worked via a projection lens, thereby precisely working a workpiece by means of optical energy.
As one part that is suitable for laser work based on the mask projection method, an orifice forming work of an orifice plate (nozzle member) of a bubble-jet printer (to be referred to as an ink-jet printer hereinafter) is known. In general, an ink-jet printer is of the type that prints characters and figures by intermittently ejecting ink from an array of a large number of small orifices each having a diameter of 20 .mu.m to 50 .mu.m onto the sheet surface, and the orifice plate is a member having the large number of small orifices (nozzles) for ejecting ink. In order to improve the quality of characters to be printed, it is important to precisely control the ink ejection timings and to manufacture the large number of small orifices on the orifice plate with high precision.
Such a mask projection method is required to have especially high productivity and to assure stable, high-precision work.